Terms of Service

Version: 1.0

Effective date: 24 July 2026

Last updated: 24 July 2026

1. Who we are

hionet is the trading name of Ionut-Laurentiu Hurmuz, a sole trader established in the United Kingdom. Our address is Flat 1, The Granaries, Bepton Road, Midhurst, GU29 9LU, United Kingdom. Contact us at [email protected] or 07448927304. We are not registered for UK VAT.

In these Terms, "hionet", "we", "us" and "our" refer to that business. "Customer", "you" and "your" refer to the person or organisation ordering or using a Service.

2. Contract documents and eligibility

These Terms apply to game server hosting, Discord bot hosting, and related hosting, network and support services (each a "Service"). The exact game, location, resources, management level, billing interval and included support are stated in the product description and order summary. The following also form part of the contract where relevant:

  • the order summary, product description, quotation or statement of work;

  • the Acceptable Use Policy;

  • the Cancellation and Refund Policy;

  • the Service Level and Support Policy;

  • any game-, bot-, location- or plan-specific terms shown before purchase;

  • the Online Safety and User Content Policy, where hionet-controlled community features are used; and

  • the Sanctions and Export Controls Policy.

If documents conflict, a signed statement of work or expressly agreed quotation takes priority for that project, then the order summary, product-specific terms, these Terms, and the general policies, unless mandatory law requires otherwise.

You must be at least 18 and able to enter a binding contract. If ordering for an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind it. You must provide accurate, current contact and billing information and keep it updated.

3. Orders and activation

An order is an offer to buy. A contract is formed when we expressly accept the order or activate the Service, whichever occurs first. Automated acknowledgment of receipt is not necessarily acceptance. We may decline an order for lawful reasons, including availability, payment, fraud, sanctions, technical feasibility or unacceptable-use risk, and will refund amounts paid for a declined order.

Services are manually provisioned. Activation normally takes about one hour after cleared payment and required checks, but may take up to 12 hours. This is an estimate, not a guaranteed deadline, unless a signed agreement expressly states otherwise. Provisioning may depend on payment clearance, identity or fraud checks, customer information, third-party supply, domain or IP availability, and technical setup. You are responsible for checking credentials and configuration promptly and protecting account access.

Consumer requests for hosting activation during a statutory cancellation period are governed by the Cancellation and Refund Policy.

4. Prices, taxes and payment

Prices, currency, billing interval and due date are shown at checkout, on the invoice or in the quotation. hionet is not UK VAT registered, so we do not add or issue invoices showing UK VAT. You remain responsible for taxes, duties or charges imposed on you in your jurisdiction, except taxes imposed on our income.

Stripe and PayPal may be offered to pay individual invoices. hionet does not automatically charge either provider for monthly renewal under the current billing model. A recurring Service renews only when you pay the renewal invoice. The invoice is normally issued five days before the current term expires.

We may correct an obvious pricing error before acceptance. After acceptance, we will not change the price for the current prepaid term. We may change renewal pricing on reasonable advance notice. If you do not accept a renewal change, you may cancel before renewal.

Payments must be made without unauthorised deductions or chargebacks. Contact us first about a disputed charge. This does not limit a lawful card, PayPal or statutory remedy.

5. Renewal, cancellation and non-payment

Services are sold on monthly terms unless the order states otherwise. We normally issue the renewal invoice five days before the Service expires. The Service renews only when that invoice is paid; Stripe and PayPal are not authorised to take an automatic monthly renewal payment.

You may cancel future renewal at https://hionet.com/services or by emailing [email protected] from the registered address before the renewal invoice is paid. Cancellation stops future renewal but does not ordinarily refund the current paid term. Statutory cancellation rights and the detailed process are in the Cancellation and Refund Policy.

If the renewal invoice remains unpaid when the current term expires, we may send a final notice. The Service may be suspended and terminated after the end of the calendar day following that final notice. There is no separate grace period after termination. Customer content is permanently deleted within 24 hours after termination, so you must export it before the end of the paid term. We may act sooner for fraud, security, sanctions or serious abuse. You remain responsible for charges properly incurred before termination.

6. Customer responsibilities

You are responsible for:

  • using Services lawfully and in accordance with the Acceptable Use Policy;

  • all activity under your account, including authorised users and end users;

  • securing passwords, control-panel accounts, Discord bot tokens, API keys, webhooks and administrator access;

  • installing updates and security fixes for game files, plugins, mods, bot code and other software you control;

  • obtaining licences, permissions, lawful bases and privacy notices for your game content, bot functions and personal-data processing;

  • complying with applicable game-publisher, platform and Discord terms and policies;

  • monitoring resource use and responding to operational or abuse notices; and

  • maintaining independent, current and tested backups.

Game servers and Discord bots are permitted only within the purchased product limits and in compliance with law, the Acceptable Use Policy, applicable game-publisher rules and Discord requirements.

7. No customer-content backup service

Unless a signed order expressly says otherwise, we do not provide backups of customer content. Any snapshot, redundancy, replication or disaster-recovery process we use for our own infrastructure is not a customer backup service and must not be relied upon to restore your data. Hardware, software, security incidents, suspension, termination and human error can cause irreversible loss.

You must keep independent backups in a separate location and test restoration. Before cancellation, migration, expiry or termination, export your content while you still have access. This warning is a core allocation of operational responsibility, but it does not exclude liability that law does not permit us to exclude.

8. Resources, changes and maintenance

You must stay within stated storage, bandwidth, CPU, memory, port, IP and other limits. Shared services must not materially impair other customers. We may apply reasonable technical controls, ask you to reduce use, or offer an upgrade. We will not deliberately throttle or suspend merely to avoid supplying the contracted Service.

We may perform maintenance and make changes needed for security, legal compliance, supplier changes, interoperability or service improvement. We will try to give advance notice of planned material disruption. Emergency maintenance may occur without advance notice.

No guaranteed uptime percentage, response time, resolution time or service credit applies unless a signed agreement expressly provides one. See the Service Level and Support Policy.

9. Third-party games and Discord

Game publishers, game distribution platforms, Discord and other integrations are independent third parties. A Service may depend on their software, APIs, authentication, rate limits, licences, policies and availability. You are responsible for maintaining any required third-party account and permission and for using official or otherwise lawfully licensed server files, bot applications and integrations.

We are not endorsed by or acting for a game publisher or Discord unless the product page expressly says so. We are not responsible for a third party changing or withdrawing its service, but we will use reasonable care in the hosting and integration work that is within our control. If a third-party change makes a Service technically impossible or unlawful, we may modify or discontinue the affected feature on reasonable notice and address unused prepaid fees under these Terms.

10. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or restrict an affected Service where reasonably necessary for non-payment, security, excessive resource use, suspected unlawful activity, sanctions, infringement, breach of contract, protection of users or infrastructure, or compliance with a lawful request.

Where circumstances permit, we will notify you, explain the general reason, limit action to the affected account, content or function, and give a reasonable opportunity to remedy or appeal. We may act immediately where delay could cause harm, compromise security, breach law or expose us or others to material liability. We will review continued suspension and restore service when the basis is resolved, subject to technical feasibility and payment.

Either party may terminate for a material breach not remedied within a reasonable written cure period, unless the breach cannot be remedied or urgent termination is justified. We may discontinue a Service on reasonable notice and provide a pro-rata refund for the unused prepaid period, unless discontinuance results from your breach or law prevents performance.

On termination, access ends and customer files, databases, configurations, logs and bot code are permanently deleted within 24 hours. We do not keep customer-content backups or residual infrastructure recovery copies. Export all content before termination. We may retain limited account, billing, fraud, dispute, abuse and security records under the Privacy Notice. Sections intended by nature to survive, including payment, IP, confidentiality, liability and dispute terms, continue.

11. Intellectual property and customer content

You retain rights in content you upload. You grant us and our suppliers a non-exclusive, worldwide, limited licence to host, copy, transmit, adapt technically and otherwise process that content only as needed to provide, secure and support the Services, comply with law and enforce the contract.

You confirm that you have the rights and lawful basis required for your game files, mods, plugins, bot code, databases, configuration, user data and instructions. We do not acquire ownership of them. Our hosting platform, branding, documentation, deployment tooling, configurations and pre-existing materials remain ours or our licensors'.

We may use feedback without restriction, provided we do not identify you or disclose confidential information without permission.

12. Confidentiality and data protection

Each party will protect non-public information received from the other, use it only for the contract and disclose it only to personnel, advisers and suppliers who need it and are bound to protect it. This does not cover information lawfully public, already known without restriction, independently developed or lawfully received from another source. Required disclosures are permitted, with notice where lawful.

Our Privacy Notice explains processing for accounts, billing, security and business operations. Where we process personal data in customer-hosted content on your behalf, the Data Processing Addendum applies if data-protection law requires it.

13. Service standards and warranties

We will provide Services with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise that a Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, compatible with every system, immune from attack or suitable for an undisclosed purpose. Internet and third-party services involve risks outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in these Terms affects a consumer's mandatory rights. In particular, UK consumers may have rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for services not provided with reasonable care and skill or digital content that is not of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose or as described. Remedies may include repeat performance, repair, replacement or a price reduction as applicable.

14. Liability

Nothing excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of title, deliberate misconduct, or any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Nothing limits a consumer's mandatory statutory remedies.

For consumers, we are responsible for losses that are a foreseeable result of our breach or failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for business losses suffered by a consumer. If digital content we supply damages a consumer's device or other digital content because we failed to use reasonable care and skill, we will repair the damage or pay appropriate compensation as required by law.

For business customers only, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, or loss of profit, revenue, anticipated savings, business opportunity or goodwill, except to the extent such exclusion is prohibited by law. Subject to the non-excludable liabilities above, each party's total aggregate liability arising from an affected Service in any rolling 12-month period is limited to the greater of (a) the fees paid or payable for that Service in that period and (b) GBP 100. This cap does not apply to the customer's payment obligations, infringement caused by customer content, or breach of confidentiality or data-protection obligations to the extent applying it would be unlawful or manifestly unreasonable.

We will take reasonable steps to mitigate loss, and you must do the same. The limitations reflect the price and availability of insurance but do not excuse failure to provide contracted Services with reasonable care and skill.

15. Indemnity for business customers

If you are a business, you will indemnify us against third-party claims and reasonable direct costs arising from unlawful customer content or your material breach of the AUP, but only to the extent caused by you. We must notify you promptly, allow reasonable participation in the defence, and mitigate loss. You are not responsible to the extent we caused or increased the claim. This section does not apply to consumers.

16. Notices

Contract notices may be sent by email to the address registered on the account or to [email protected]. Notices are treated as received on the next UK business day after sending unless the sender receives a delivery failure. We may also give operational notices in the account portal. Formal legal proceedings must be served as required by applicable procedural law.

You must keep your email address current. A change of contact details does not take effect until recorded or acknowledged.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms for legal, security, supplier or service reasons. We will give reasonable advance notice of material changes affecting an active recurring Service. Changes normally apply from the next renewal or stated effective date. If a material change substantially disadvantages you, you may cancel before it takes effect. Changes needed urgently by law or security may take effect sooner with as much notice as reasonably possible.

18. General

Neither party is responsible for delay caused by events beyond reasonable control, but must take reasonable steps to reduce the effect. This does not excuse payment already due, and consumer statutory rights remain unaffected.

We may use subcontractors and may assign the contract as part of a genuine business transfer if this does not reduce consumer protections. You may not transfer the contract without our consent, not to be unreasonably withheld for a business customer. No third party may enforce these Terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest remains effective. Delay in enforcement is not a waiver. These Terms and incorporated documents are the entire agreement, without excluding liability for fraud.

19. Law and disputes

Contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue under the Complaints Policy.

English law governs the contract. The courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this choice does not deprive you of mandatory protections of your home country, and you may bring proceedings in any court available to you under mandatory consumer law. Nothing requires a consumer to waive a right to use an applicable statutory dispute process.